Children less valuable than they used to be

When pubs across B.C. were given the option of allowing kids to dine with their families up to 8 p.m., nearly all of the pubs said no thanks. Their customers let them know loud and clear that they wanted to be able to enjoy a drink and a visit with family and friends without having to put up with other people’s kids.

Now restaurants are getting in on the act.

Both across North America and internationally, more and more restaurants are kicking the kids out. The immediate increase in business these restaurants are seeing more than drowns out the whining and moaning on social media about heartless discrimination.

It’s actually not the kids being banned, of course. It’s parents.

Everyone has a tale to tell about being in a restaurant and seeing kids running wild, shouting at the top of their lungs, playing noisy games on their electronic devices or just being brats, while their parents sit and eat as if nothing is happening. That may be normal at their house but when they’re eating in a public restaurants, they’re not in their house anymore and diners see annoying, not adorable, kids.

Every restaurateur and anyone who has ever worked in the food business has numerous horror stories about how irate parents get when they are asked to better control their child’s behaviour or to leave.

Since most families now eat in the living room while watching television, the boring formality of eating at a dining room table and basic meal time etiquette (using cutlery properly, asking politely for items to be passed, chewing with mouth closed, not talking with food in mouth) are not rehearsed. Out in public, chaos ensues. That’s the fault of parents but the kids get blamed because, as the overall population continues to age and the baby boomers move into retirement, kids have become outsiders — them, other, not like the rest of us.

It has taken decades for this to happen, as the percentage of children in the overall population has slowly declined, partly due to the boomers and partly due to adults having fewer kids or none at all. As a result, communities that used to be so focused on kids because there were so many of them are now dropping the playgrounds in favour of walking trails, closing schools and opening craft breweries, kicking kids out of restaurants and anywhere else they might disturb the grownups.

The kids that are left grow up in a world where they are no longer the priority, both at home and in society. Many struggle to adapt and the older generations call the ones that can’t keep up soft. Many are pampered, instead of parented. Many are neglected, out of frustration and laziness by adults who wanted the social status of being a parent, but didn’t actually want to put in 20 or more years of hard time raising the next generation of adults.

Kids that earn praise are the ones that are seen as mature because they do well in school, they excel in sports, they go on international Rotary youth exchanges or band trips to Cuba.

Meanwhile, society seems to be at a tipping point regarding that status that comes with being a parent. For many of the current generation in their childbearing years, higher education, career advancement, home ownership and personal wealth are far more important status symbols than having kids. Even worse, there is the increasing social pressure that having kids is a mistake, an inability to stay on the Pill and make sure the condom doesn’t break.

“Want a kid? Get a dog” is now commonly heard.

The irony is that as the number of children and their social relevance decreases, more adults want to behave like children. They listen only to the music of their youth, prefer movies from comic books and children’s novels, revel in the toys they can afford to buy and cheer when Netflix brings back new episodes of their favourite TV shows from years gone by.

Then they go on vacation to play. What is Las Vegas, after all, but a Disneyland for adults, complete with bright lights, games, rides and shows? A cruise ship is a floating playpen for grownups, where the staff make the food, clean up, entertain and tuck the guests safely into bed, just like parents do for their kids.

These adults prefer the cruise ships or the Mexican resorts or the restaurants where kids aren’t actually allowed because that would get in the way of the fun. Who wants to be tripping over actual children while behaving like a child themselves?

There is little room left for young people in society when there are plenty of so-called adults willing to act so immature on YouTube or rant on Facebook like spoiled brats about how everything is just so unfair when they don’t get what they want, when they want it.

Better to be an adult but act like a child from time to time than to actually have one of your own.

As youth increasingly disappear from view and teenagers are expected to transform into mature, fully finished individuals overnight, the value of kids to families, to communities and to society is steadily diminished. What’s left is a growing number of adults with no one and nothing to be accountable to except for their own shallow self-interests.

Childhood is what gives adulthood meaning but that’s easy for the grownups to forget when the kids aren’t around.